Opinion: FBI’s Comey has a history as a political and corporate fixer

Using his office to swing a presidential election to the GOP, and a career of trading ‘access’ for money

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FBI Director James Comey has a consistent track record of donating to Republican candidates for office, particularly to establishment politicians who look likely to win, including John McCain and Mitt Romney.

You think FBI head James Comey is a neutral law-enforcement officer just doing his job?

Think again.

Comey is no Eliot Ness, and he’s not your father’s G-Man. He is a long-standing Washington hack who has pocketed millions from federal contractors, a powerful hedge fund and a shady bank with a record of international money laundering. Yes, really. He has a career of trading “access” for money, and he is a donor to Republican political campaigns.

All of this is documented. All of this is drawn entirely from publicly issued documents that are beyond challenge or controversy.

Three times James Comey has publicly intervened in the election in a manner most likely to help Donald Trump. It’s not even ambiguous.

Comey was first appointed to the Justice Department by the Bush-Cheney administration. After they had launched the second Iraq war and committed billions to it, he was hired as consigliere and chief fixer by defense giant Lockheed Martin LMT, -0.55%
. (Oh, and Lockheed has now deleted the web page announcing the appointment. How cute. Alas for them, the page has been archived.)

Why would a defense contractor in Washington give a top job to a hack with no knowledge of engineering or defense work, and no military experience? You got it.

For most of those years, Lockheed — and Comey — successfully hid how much he earned. But in 2009, due to some oversight, they had to disclose it in a public filing. His pay for that year alone? Try $6.1 million. No, really. (Check out the table on Page 48 of the stockholder proxy statement, right here.) Further details showed that, by then, this fixer had also accumulated at least $11 million in free stock — in addition to the outsized salaries and bonuses he’d earned along the way.

But, yes, by all means, let’s talk about the way Sidney Blumenthal made $120,000 a year (ooh!) from the Clinton Foundation. Or how former President Bill Clinton made $300,000 (ooooh!) from a speech.

In 2010, Comey went to Bridgewater Associates, now the largest U.S. hedge fund, which profits from things like big geopolitical developments. In the world of finance, knowledge of what Washington is going to do next is worth more than gold.

Again, why would a hedge fund give a high-paying job to a guy with no knowledge of markets, business or finance? You got it.

In March, 2013, Comey was even hired as a board director by global investment bank HSBC. This was just three months after the bank had been whacked by the U.S. Justice Department for a staggering $1.3 billion for international money laundering, and faced criminal charges as well.

Yes, really. Just three months.

Why would a global investment bank, which desperately needed to launder its reputation in Washington, hire a political hack with no expertise in international banking? Yep. You got it.

Comey has a consistent track record of donating to Republican candidates for office, particularly to establishment guys viewed as likely to win, like John McCain and Mitt Romney. Only winners get to hire their pals on the public dime.

Now look again at the FBI during this presidential campaign.

Three times Comey has publicly intervened in the election in a manner most likely to help Donald Trump. It’s not even ambiguous.

First, in July, he damaged Hillary Clinton as much as he could without actually driving her from the race. He broke precedent to excoriate her publicly over her emails. He testified about it to Congress. The FBI published multiple documents that embarrassed her and her campaign, and raised serious questions about their conduct. And yet, mysteriously, he stopped short of an indictment.

Oh, yeah, and third, this week, his department suddenly published papers from a closed investigation into Bill Clinton from 15 years ago. Yes, really. One week to the day before the election.

Gosh, what an awful lot of coincidences there seem to be.

The race is now neck-and-neck. If Trump wins? He’ll be handing out lots of great government jobs to his buddies. Anyone on his good side should be on easy street — in Washington, New York or anywhere else.

And there won’t be many of them, either. Most of the establishment has spurned Donald Trump, for obvious reasons. So any hack smart enough to win cookie points with The Donald before the election should be on easy street. Cha-ching! Good times.

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